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IT HAS been decimated by web piracy and the decline of physical CDs but the global music industry claimed to have turned a corner after recording its first increase in revenues for 15 years.

Industry bosses hailed a return to growth, fuelled by rising digital revenues as music fans sign up to subscription streaming services such as Spotify, which offer instant access to millions of songs.

"The industry is on the road to recovery," claimed Frances Moore, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which reported that global recorded music revenues rose by 0.3 per cent in 2012.

The number of people paying to use subscription services has leapt 44 per cent in 2012 to 20 million.

Subscription revenues are expected to account for more than 10 per cent of digital revenues for the first time in 2012.

The Spotify service now has 5 million paid subscribers, up from 3 million in 2011. In its native Sweden an estimated one-third of the entire population uses the service.

The arrival of Cloud-based music services from Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, allowing people to access their entire music collections from a variety of different devices has helped improve the user experience for licensed services, the report found.

Google is poised to make a major intervention in the market with the launch of its own music streaming service which will include millions of songs from major recording artists.

A music streaming service would place Google, which owns video-sharing site YouTube, in direct competition with Spotify.

Google already distributes music via Google Play, where users can purchase songs and albums in a similar way to Apple's iTunes.

But the IFPI called on Google, which is in talks with major labels over accessing their catalogues for the new service, to do more to prevent copyright infringing music files from leading its music search engine results.

Ms Moore said: "This growth is still fragile. Google needs to priorities legal sites in its searches. Far from copyright 'smothering innovation', music, based on copyright, is driving the digital economy. Music is driving social network sites. The highest number of searches on Facebook and Twitter are for music artists."

The report said that the recording industry annually invested 26 per cent of its trade revenues ($4.5 billion) in developing and marketing new talent.

British stars helped fuel the return to growth with Adele's 21 the biggest selling global album of 2012, selling 8.3 million copies.

One Direction sold nearly 9 million copies of their two albums.

However the report found that around one-third of internet users globally (32%) are still regularly using unlicensed file-sharing sites.

Ms Moore said the first growth for 15 years was "a hard-won success for an industry that has innovated, battled and transformed itself over a decade.

The music industry has adapted to the internet world and learned how to meet the needs of consumers."